Back at home, I’d kept my suspicions to myself for a couple of weeks, when I heard Jack having a quiet phone call. “Who was it, honey?” I asked him.
“Somebody from school about a meeting. Nothing.”
I let it go, but my guard was up. I heard him again, with that same tone, two days later. Then one morning he was on the phone before I even got out to the kitchen. I punched *69 on the extension, and checked ML’s number on information. I was no fool.
Jack was slathering cream cheese on a bagel when I confronted him.
“Why were you talking to Mary Lou so early?” I asked him.
“What?” He looked up from the newspaper like he was dazed.
“I just did star-sixty-nine on the phone.”
“Huh?”
“Six-nine. It redials the last caller.”
“Oh. Why’d you do that?”
“I wanted to know who called so early. So answer my question.”
“Mary Lou is having trouble with her department head. I was just giving her advice.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, Georgia. What’s your problem?”
Of course, I shouldn’t have tipped. He was too fast to get caught like that. However, he wasn’t aware that I could hear the change in his voice, the soft tone like he used to use on me, and I kept that to myself.
By afternoon I started to feel bitter. I tried to concentrate on reading e-mail, but it was tough. I slopped a shot of Wild Turkey into my chamomile tea and took a long gulp. Son of a bitch. For fifteen years, I’d cooked, waited on him, and taken care of the home so he could keep his nose buried in print. Now he’s sniffing up another woman. In the fall, when ML took the job teaching English literature, he’d mentioned that they had known each other in college. I should have been more alert. I remembered her name from years before. She was a fantasy that never came true. Now was his chance.
I heard Purrzie’s toenails trickling down the wood hall floor and called his name. He always came when I called him, unlike Jack. He stopped at the doorway of the office and yawned. This cat was a beauty, streamlined and muscular, a lovable, perfectly marked tabby, and smart as all get out.
“Oh, did I wake my sweetie? Com’ere, sweetie.”
He came to me and I petted his back and gave him smooches on the head. He was warm all over, probably just got up from his window ledge. “Oh, precious sweetheart. How’s my sweetie?”
He took a leap and settled on my lap. He loved me more than anything else in the world, including food. You couldn’t say that about any dog, or dog’s best friend.
I started down the spam awaiting my attention, deleting the hundred or so about Viagra, penis enlargement, and the latest assortment of sleazy sexual promotions. Masturbate to dilated teen rectum movies, Mature lesbians rubbing their vulvas, See me playing with my rectum. Christ. Rectums? I couldn’t really understand the attraction. Nobody would have believed this five years ago, or twenty years ago, when Jack had tried to woo ML.
It was bad luck that she’d turned up now, when adultery seemed minor compared to the popular sexual perversions. ML wasn’t gorgeous, but different from me. Neither of us was a spring chicken at forty-five. I was stocky and muscular with a round face and dark hair, while she was a tall blonde, thin and sleepy-eyed, with narrow shoulders and dangling arms that seemed to lack solid bone or muscle, the feminine kind of woman Jack always looked at. ML had a slight edge that gave the impression she was only interested in what life could do for her, and the world could go fuck itself otherwise. I might’ve enjoyed her attitude if she hadn’t been enjoying Jack.
I closed off the e-mail window and started typing up a list of Jack’s new behaviors and the times and dates of the calls when he’d walk into another room to talk. I realized that lately, he’d mentioned going on a diet. Damn, that made sense. Bony ML wouldn’t like sweaty flab interfering with her breathing, and Jack was smart enough to figure he’d better get rid of some before the newness of the sex wore off. Of course, he hadn’t yet managed to cut his food intake. I could probably end their relationship if I just kept cooking his favorites, but it wasn’t a sure bet, and could take a while.
Had he started getting haircuts more often? Tweezing the hairs from his nose and ears? I wasn’t sure, but in general he was a little more attractive these days. It didn’t look good for him.
I made a note to keep track of the crossword puzzles. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Jack with his pencil poised over the newspaper in weeks—so romantic for the two of them, fact master and wordsmith, the perfect couple.
I had counted the condoms, the stash in his nightstand. I was sure he’d bought a full dozen in the month when I’d forgotten to take my pills, and his sex drive hadn’t been that strong. Now there were only three left. He was thrifty enough to finish up the open box rather than buy a separate supply for ML. I hadn’t had the sense to check the quantity before I confronted him about the phone calls. Since then the three hadn’t been touched. I went back and continued to delete spam. It was comforting to know that if I ever needed sex, of any kind, I could find it easily. I’d put dinner in the oven earlier—lasagna, rich with cheese and tomato and béchamel sauce—and it began to send its aroma my way. I’d also gotten in a couple bottles of good Chianti. Italian food was Jack’s favorite. I planned to start over that night, convincing him that my suspicions were gone so he’d be off guard. I wanted to catch him for pure shock value and to show him how smart I was, in spite of what he thought. Then maybe we could restart our marriage on more equal ground, him being in the hole he dug with his guilt.
I used to think Jack was cute and funny when he got into a rant, but now I realized that most of the joy he got from our marriage was by emphasizing my stupidity, and more than that, he enjoyed the company of somebody on his own level. I began to resent his intellectual monologues and use of words I didn’t know. He was a professor of history, with his endless stories and details about wars and slavery. On a weekly basis, I listened to repeated critiques of Dee Brown’s bad writing and poor research in Creek Mary’s Blood. ML was, no doubt, impressed that Jack knew the facts better than the guys who wrote the books.
I hadn’t attended college, but my life had never lacked for it, until now. I had my restaurant and made a much better living than Jack did teaching, but I knew deep down that he was only concerned with facts, how many he knew and how many I didn’t. He’d always thrown me crumbs about how our differences made us so good together, but being smarter than me was what puffed him up, besides eating the great food I cooked. I think those were the reasons he was keeping me around, since he’d found ML again.
I tried to pay the phone bill online, but I was so upset I kept misspelling my password. I pictured ML and Jack together in the library at school, fondling each other under the table, her reciting poetry or him explaining how the Indians had eaten six pounds of meat a day in winter because they had no vegetables—Indians as thin as her, he’d say, and poke her in her flat stomach. It would be his dream to have a woman who enjoyed listening to all his factual crap. I poured the empty teacup full of Wild Turkey, chugged it. I wondered if they snickered together about all the things they figured I couldn’t understand.
Purrzie stretched and jumped off my lap. I followed him into the kitchen to heat his rotisserie chicken. I shredded it into tiny bits so he wouldn’t gobble big pieces and choke. He wasn’t piggish by nature, but I wanted to make his life safer and more enjoyable in any way I could.
I looked into the oven. The lasagna was beautiful, but couldn’t compete with ML. Besides being an intellectual who shared Jack’s tedious book interests, she was the lost love of his life, and now he had a chance to regain his self-esteem. Years before she surfaced, he’d told me they’d once smoked dope and had sex. Now he probably didn’t remember telling me, or more likely never realized I would put together the name with the information after so long.
I’d made the salad and was just sliding the bread into the oven when the key
s rattled in the door. I reminded myself to keep a lid on conversation about ML.
Jack came in and gave me a big hug and kiss, and I sniffed his mustache and neck for any unfamiliar scents. I wasn’t sure. He started to sniff, too, maybe at the Wild Turkey, another thing he was always on my case about.
“Lasagna, your favorite,” I said. “Garlic bread on the way.”
“Yum. I don’t deserve you, Georgia.”
“Why not?”
He kissed me quick and headed into the bathroom, his mind already elsewhere.
The Wild Turkey had a kick. I realized I’d better calm down. I wanted to ask him if Mary Lou could cook, although I knew it didn’t matter to him anyway. It’s one of those things you list when you’re judging your pros and cons, but it doesn’t weigh a feather against that hot rod of wild passion. I’d been riding the hot rod less and less.
I was pulling the pan of lasagna out of the oven when the phone rang. Jack was still in the bathroom. I shoved the pan on the counter and answered it.
“Is this Mrs. Brown?”
“There is no Mrs. Brown,” I said. Telemarketers. Shit.
“Oh, sorry.”
I’d been pretty harsh and I could hear apology in her tone. Maybe she thought Mrs. Brown was dead, or else that I wanted to be Mrs. Brown and couldn’t get Jack to marry me. The truth was I’d never changed my name. What ever she thought, she hung up fast—something to remember for future use.
Jack yelled from the bedroom. “Who was that, sweetie?”
“Telemarketing.”
“What were they selling?”
“I don’t know. They asked for Mrs. Brown and I said there wasn’t one.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She hung up.”
“Good job.” Jack came strolling out in his jeans and Ivy League shirt, looking his casual academic self, his face a little too happy for a weekday. It could have been because I was pouring the wine, and the lasagna was browned perfectly and bubbling in the center of the table, but I started to think. We’d had a telemarketing call a week earlier, and about an hour later he went to the gym and didn’t come home until near midnight, after supposedly meeting friends and having a few beers. I’d fallen for it at the time, but now I realized the call could be a trick, in case I answered the phone, or a signal that ML was waiting for him.
I remembered something else, too. Jack had been keeping his cell phone turned off while we were together. That way he could get back to her at his leisure. Fucking asshole. He thought he had it made because I was such a dope.
I set the garlic bread on the table, sliced out a chunk of lasagna, and put it on Jack’s plate. It was oozing cheese and red sauce and he licked his lips. He was so good at this. Getting ready to chow down and enjoy his dinner, then take off for some poetry and wild sex, leaving me with the mess.
He held out his wineglass and toasted me for the nice dinner. It started to gnaw at me, the way he was so cool. I used to admire that in a man, but now I saw the downside. They never flinch, no matter what you do. Teflon personalities. Nothing sticks—until the Teflon gets scratched.
I got involved in my plate as he started up a lecture about slaves. Topics were always swimming around in Jack’s head. I nodded and chewed.
“I was reading the other day about cat-hauling.”
“Cat-hauling?” The word cat caught my attention. “A service to take Purrzie to the vet?”
“No, the slave owners did it before the Civil War as a form of punishment, to make examples of the tough, hard-to-coerce slaves. It’s in Charles Ball’s slave narrative.”
“Were the cats all right?”
“I guess. You might not want to hear about this during dinner.”
“As long as the cats were fine.”
“The idea was to tie a man down on his stomach, naked, with his arms and legs staked out, drop a big tomcat on his back, and pull it by its tail. The cat clawed and ripped into the skin and muscle, trying for a foothold to get away.”
“I can imagine.”
“They would do this until the slave was unconscious from the shock. Of course, there were no antibiotics, so the infection was often deadly.”
“Holding the cat by the tail. Ooh.” I cringed. “Brutal.” I looked over at Purrzie on the windowsill, who was licking his paw peacefully. “God, that’s horrible.”
“Certainly was. Imagine getting ripped to shreds then left to get infected and die.”
“The cats were probably scared to death.” I took a big slug of my wine to get past the vision of an agonizing cat, screaming and being yanked, not having done anything wrong, not knowing why he was being punished. I shivered. “I didn’t know cats were kept as pets back then.”
“I don’t think they cared for them like we do.” He looked at Purrzie still licking himself and shook his head. “Not like His Majesty. Cats were kept to kill mice.”
I ignored his cut at Purrzie, but it registered in my brain. He started up about some Civil War battle tactics, where the Union Army made tunnels like mice, but there was no further mention of cats, so I lost interest. When he stopped talking, I smiled. Now I was just waiting to see how long he’d hang around.
“There’s ice cream for dessert.”
“No thanks. I’m stuffed. I’m going to head over to the gym after I digest this great dinner.”
It was an hour and a half between the time of the telemarketing call and the time he left the house. I figured he didn’t want to jump up from the table immediately and risk trouble. I thought of telling him I was going along to the gym, but I hadn’t worked out in two years and I knew he’d be suspicious. I didn’t want to follow and risk getting caught. I was biding my time to figure out a better plan.
He came home late again that night and said the guys wanted to make racquetball and drinks a weekly thing. He had showered, so there wasn’t any evidence to sniff. These were guys I hadn’t met, so I couldn’t call to check anything out. I didn’t bother objecting. The jig would soon be up.
The next morning he made love to me, payback for the lasagna, no doubt, so he wouldn’t feel guilty. I started to think maybe I was making too big a deal out of all this and I could win him back.
“I was thinking we could take a long weekend and go to Cancún or somewhere to get away from the cold,” I said.
“I don’t know. I have to keep up with my syllabus.”
“Oh, take a day or two! The students will be happy. My treat.” I knew ML, being a teacher, couldn’t compete when it came to money.
“We practically just got back from Christmas. How can you take more time off from the restaurant?”
“I trust my new manager completely.” I studied his face to see if the word trust made him flinch, but it didn’t.
“I’ll think about it. It’s true we have Mary Lou to take care of Purrzie now. She still hasn’t gotten another cat.” He smiled. His whole demeanor brightened up at the thought of ML watching Purrzie. So why didn’t the cunt get a new cat? I bet she couldn’t wait to have Purrzie to herself again.
He was off to school early. Said he had papers to grade and had forgotten to bring them home. I bet they were meeting for coffee. My stomach started to burn as his car backed down the drive. So that was it. Purrzie was his ace in the hole—working better than what he had in the hole during his younger years. He knew I’d never let Purrz go, but ML didn’t. ML knew a one-of-a-kind cat when she saw it, and Jack was a fringe benefit.
I couldn’t take it any longer. I wasn’t a wimp who could live like that, waiting and hoping. I took another day off at the restaurant so I had time to work out my scheme. I sat down at the computer and looked at my e-mail. All crap. Not a single note from a friend or relative. Nobody I could talk to.
I deleted more rectal spam as I formulated the details to catch Jack and ML. I closed my AOL and used Jack’s password to open his account. Sure enough, there was e-mail from mljonson45. What luck! It had to be Mary Lou, and she was on AOL, too.
The mail
wasn’t anything interesting, just a fast note: Don’t worry. I have a great idea. Will talk to you at school.
It didn’t sound like good news for me. I deleted it. I’d heard about setting up false accounts where the address was one letter off from the real address. If I used a capital I instead of a small l, and pretended to write from Mary Lou, Jack would never know the difference, and I would receive his reply. I went back to my account and added a new screen name, mIjonson45. Only the computer could tell what letter that line stood for. I was damn smart.
I decided to keep the note to Jack plain and mysterious, since I didn’t know their little love names, or what fancy expressions an English professor might use.
Come to my place at 8 pm to night. I have a secret surprise for you.
I thought about the word secret. Was it too much? Surprise sounded too ordinary. I wanted him to build up anticipation so when I answered her door, his balls would shrivel into prunes.
I also wanted to be sure ML was home that night or I wouldn’t have any way of getting inside. It was complicated. Jack’s e-mail address was historybuff1860@aol, which I changed to historybutt1860@aol, and sent the message to ML: Busy with grading today. I can come to your place to night at 7:00. Let me know if it’s okay.
The address change was little risky, but it was too cute to resist. If ML thought it was a hoax, she might still be home anyway. At worst, I was wasting my time and would have to try something else.
I knew Jack would check his e-mail a few times from school. I sometimes left him messages there instead of calling. I was a little worried that he might say something to ML, but she was in a different building, and if they thought they had secret plans for later, they’d be unlikely to look for each other. Worst case, he would mention the e-mail and they would figure it was some kind of mistake. It might give them the creeps, but they couldn’t trace it to me.
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